Last 25 of February, at the Cluster’s headquarters located at Innovhub SSI, in Milan, the project partner AFIL organized the event “The ecosystems of Lombardy’s industry between innovation and growth: opportunities for advanced manufacturing” in collaboration with Lombardy Region, MADE Competence Center Industria 4.0, and University of Bergamo, GREENSMARTMED Lead Partner.
Nowadays, industrial ecosystems, such as supply chains, the AFIL Cluster, and its Strategic Communities, represent the strategic and operational centers of the Twin Transition in Lombardy Region. Through the local project partners AFIL and UNIBG, the GREENSMARTMED project is addressing these strategic actors, to support manufacturing SMEs in effectively facing organizational and financial barriers in their green innovation processes.
In this context, the AFIL’s event was mainly focused on engaging its members and those involved in the supply chains facilitated by its Cluster, to both boost collaborations and clarify the features and scopes of some of the funding opportunities available in the first half of 2025 at local and international level.
Namely, apart from a specific session dedicated to a brief update on the cooperation between AFIL and Lombardy Region in the PLASTIX project, the event represented an important occasion to promote among a wider audience different funding initiatives and development opportunities, like some of the calls from the Filiere Package presented by Lombardy Region (DG Economic Development), the M.I.A. Lombardia initiative presented by MADE, and the GREENSMARTMED project presented by the University of Bergamo.
More in detail, the GREENSMARTMED Coordinator, Fabiana Pirola, Professor at the Department of Management, Information, and Production Engineering at the University of Bergamo, described the project, as involving AFIL and other organizations from Italy, Spain, France, Greece, and Bulgaria, alongside associated partners among which Lombardy Region and Confindustria Lombardia, underlying how its main scope is perfectly aligned with the activities carried out by AFIL’s Strategic Communities and the supply chains facilitated by its Cluster.
Indeed, the project aims at creating an innovative ecosystem, connecting businesses, universities, and research centers in sectors such as textile, agri-food, mobility and batteries, machinery, and plastics, because “Innovation requires an ecosystemic approach,” as explained by Fabiana Pirola, highlighting the role of regional working groups in identifying the needs of businesses and explaining that the second phase of GREENSMARTMED is bringing this discussion to an European level, fostering strategic collaborations and access to funding.
Finally, she stated that, even though the project does not offer SMEs direct funding, it represents a unique networking opportunity for them. Events such as the Green Manufacturing Transnational event held in Lyon in December 2024 (which was attended by the members of the ROLD Cluster and the University of Brescia) and the upcoming one on agri-food, scheduled for May 2025 in Thessaloniki, represent one of the main tool of the project strategy to allow companies to find partners, network, and share best practices for a green manufacturing value chain.
For more information, find here the Agenda of the event.
